The Joy of Hate

by Greg Gutfeld

  But if you watch any one of my shows for even ten minutes, you realize they have loads of lefties on. We tolerate the left because it’s part of our mission—to be fair and balanced. I know the left snickers at that, but realize that it would be idiotic not to present both left and right opinions. Fact is, because I don’t reflexively reflect the shared opinions of contemporary progressive thought, I have a target on my back. Which means I have to be that much more charitable. Because I am confident in my mission, presenting liberal perspectives should only make whatever else that much stronger. Seriously, put a leftist on any show and you see how much more sensible the right is. You have me sitting there sounding reasonable and anyone to my left morphs into one of those LSD experiments from the fifties, even if I’m not wearing pants.

  In the kiddie pool that is tolerance, my side wins hands down over MSNBC, CNN, and every other media entity you can mention. But it doesn’t matter—the left will only deny it, justifying their own bitter attacks against this big fat meanie. And boy do they hate that meanie, so much so that they cannot watch it (which is another point: ask a critic what show they can’t stand and why, and you realize they never watch it—they just assume it’s evil). They assume the whole channel is evil. It’s like the world’s biggest factory for child slavery.

  Which leads me to this morning (it’s October 30, 2011, for you people totally into dates and numbers). It’s an odd Sunday morning. I’m going to lay it out for you from the beginning, so you can see why it’s important. And because this is a story about Twitter, it will involve tweets. But I hate reading stories where the tweets interrupt the flow, so I will be paraphrasing a lot of this to save time and keep your attention from straying to other things (like my nude Pilates videos).

  I currently wrote about this on my website, the Daily Gut, but in case you missed it: Last night (a wintry Saturday), some weird dude tweets me—in CAPS. I don’t know why crazy people don’t see that typing in CAPS reveals their seething instability, but I guess that’s a circular argument one can never escape from. If you ask them if they’re crazy, they respond, I’M NOT CRAZY!!! I’M NOT CRAZY!!! Anyhoo, he calls me a wannabe “f*ckface.” No big deal. I retweet it with a comment, “Mom, we’ve had this discussion.”

  I continue drinking into the stormy night at a local steakhouse. I go to bed. While I’m asleep, some dude (dudette?) on Twitter, pretending to be me, with a fake account, tweets to the creepy all-CAPS dude—calling him a “faggot.”

  The Twitter account is obviously fake, but sensing a glorious opportunity to destroy me, the all-CAPS dude vows he’s going to ruin my life by spreading that tweet everywhere.

  And he sets out to do so, with great zest. Sunday morning, I wake up and look at my laptop. There are three “Google alerts,” telling me something. I hate Google alerts, but I also love them. In a way, they’re like children who jump on your bed demanding to go to the zoo. Except this zoo is filled with bad news instead of bad gnus. (Note to reader: I should turn off my laptop and simply retire. I will never write a line greater than that.)

  The first one is from a website, Back2Stonewall, claiming I tweeted something homophobic. I click to the next alert, and this one scares me. It’s The Raw Story, a major left-wing site, also reporting that I tweeted something homophobic. They were more charitable, though, unlike the Stonewall folks, who referred to me as a homophobic shit-weasel. I am not sure what a shit-weasel is, but I’m thinking it’s not a compliment.

  I head over to Twitter. There, Back2Stonewall has tweeted this slur not once, but four times. Apparently lost in the glee of capturing a conservative in full homophobic glory, he neglects to e-mail or call anyone for verification (which is the first thing you learn in any journo course), or click over to the fraudulent Twitter account, to see that it’s false.

  And believe me, even my mom could see it was fake. The guy took advantage of a typography flaw in Twitter, where an upper-case I looks like a lower-case L. So he spelled “gutfeld,” as “gutfeld.” And if you look to the right, you’ll see he isn’t verified and doesn’t have a long history of tweeting. Or followers. He has a handful of followers and a handful of tweets—all of them nonsense (or more nonsensical than mine). It was obviously a dummy account.

  Anyway, that didn’t concern Back2Stonewall. He boasted that he had screen grabs of my offensive tweet, which he claims had been taken down by me; but oddly he left out the entire screen grab, which would have shown the very low tweet/follower numbers.

  Why did he do that? I don’t know. Maybe, in haste, he didn’t see the whole screen. Or maybe, because the story was just too good to be true, it didn’t matter if it wasn’t.

  I contacted a lawyer, a high-powered gentleman with an office near the perfume counter at Macy’s. Then I contacted the Back2Stonewall guy and the dude at Raw Story. The blogger at Raw Story acted fast, and fixed it, and thanked me. The Back2Stonewall website never responded to me. So I hit him up on Twitter.

  He reacted differently from the Raw Story guy—saying he wasn’t sure if my story was true, and besides, evil right-wingers don’t verify stuff either (if only that were true, my life would be a lot simpler). It infuriated me. Instead of looking at the facts, he adopted a stereotypical, ideological stance, basically saying, “Yeah, it’s not true, but since I don’t like you, I don’t care.”

  I tweeted to everyone that this was a hoax, and also engaged the Stonewall fellow, asking him to put aside ideology and do the right thing. I sent him the facts. I posted the screen grabs of the fake account. But I could tell it was hard for him—he wanted so badly for me to be a right-wing homophobe, so much so that he couldn’t let go of the lie. It was like trying to deprogram a Raëlian who tweets.

  His jab at my network revealed something else: That a lie is permissible if it serves a greater good. Because I work for “the enemy,” it doesn’t matter if I really didn’t post that offensive tweet, because I’m evil anyway. I’m sure lefties think that I probably agree with the sentiment of that tweet, even if I didn’t write it. Despite the fact that I’ve been called that very epithet. By the left, on Twitter.

  I filed a complaint with Twitter, and monitored Twitter and Google to see where the story was going. After some time, Back2Stonewall retracted the story, saying also that they sincerely regretted publishing it. But embroidered in the apology was a nonapology—that while B2S was embarrassed by being fooled, I should be embarrassed by my followers. B2S also tweeted, sarcastically, what a “great f*cking day” it had been—as if he were the victim in all this.

  Fact is, it is sad that I have to feel grateful Raw Story and Stonewall retracted the phony story. I should feel outrage that they ran with it to begin with. I mean, how hard is it to contact me? Google my name, and you end up at my website, the Daily Gut. I’m on Twitter! I respond. I am that lonely.

  Perhaps they chose not to contact me because they didn’t think they needed to—clearly, someone like me would say something that bigoted on Twitter, so why bother verifying? Also, if I denied it, there goes the story. And besides, if I wasn’t guilty of this, so what? I’m guilty of so much else. I’ve got it coming, you know (which I do, but for reasons more related to a spring break in the 1990s than for what these knuckleheads contend).

  Like I said, the blind acceptance of the story is worse than the fraudulent tweet. And, really, that’s why I’m writing this now—to explain to a few of you why this is a big deal. If I hadn’t jumped on this accusation first thing, I would have been destroyed, outnumbered by every left-wing website feeding off a prior link to that original website, building a tower of proof that I am a homophobe who should be fired. I feared that the fake account would disappear and then I would really be screwed.

  Some people might say, “Dude, it’s Twitter. Lighten up.” But those people are fools. Once it got on Raw Story, it would be on the HuffPo, then the New York media sites, then MSNBC, etc. I had to kill it before the caterpillar became a butterfly (which is generally my approach to caterpillars and butter
flies).

  So, back to the apartment. Yeah, the East Coast liberals looking at real estate must really hate people like me. And I have to sell my apartment, so I have to get myself out of the “I hate conservatives” equation. I have to erase my existence in my 900-square-foot apartment. Because I don’t really believe a lefty—no matter how much they love the apartment, in a New York real estate market that remains highly competitive—would buy a place inhabited by someone who, in their mind, probably eats the homeless (I do).

  In real estate sections of city magazines, you’ll occasionally come across a feature on an agent whose job it is to sell houses where grisly crimes took place. Suicide, drug overdoses, mass murder, dance parties hosted by Bob Schieffer—all of these lower the price of property, not just for that residence but for the places surrounding it. Debates occur as to whether that information should be disclosed during the selling, or somehow interested buyers should be allowed find out by themselves. Maybe they’ll just assume it’s a wine stain.

  Sadly, I’ve never seen an article on how to sell your place if you are a well-known righty. Maybe it isn’t as big a deal as I think, but I don’t know anyone else who has to hide the things they read or write before an open house. Not that I was forced to do it, but it made sense to do it anyway. It’s like if I had a bondage fetish, and I had to hide the equipment. It’s why I have a false floor under the bed for the fetish clothing and restraints. (I told the contractor it was for Christmas decorations.) I wonder if there is a “conservative lived here” exorcist service? Maybe they can import the Reverend Wright to wave around a copy of The Nation and dispel all the evil, righty demons.

  I don’t think this is an issue for someone working at MSNBC, because, of course, liberal perspectives are embraced by New Yorkers. If you were to take in an open house, and spy a book on a coffee table by Bill Maher, you might throw up, but most Manhattanites would ponder pleasantly how they share the same assumptions as the homeowner. It might even make them more likely to buy—even if they can’t afford the place (something that doesn’t bother most New Yorkers). We just deserve to live there! These are my people!

  While we were selling the apartment, we were also looking. And in nearly every place we hit we found the same old crap on coffee tables. Books by Bill Moyers and Al Gore seemed common. I didn’t see any copies of Decision Points lying around. But it didn’t bother me. It’s part of the wallpaper. If I buy the place, I ain’t buying the stuff that goes with it. One pretty cool apartment I saw had the owner’s stuff everywhere. Apparently he created soundtracks to movies, and he had his many awards all over the place. It didn’t make me want to buy the place—it just made me feel like the guy who lived there was a show-off. And he could’ve at least closed his robe during the open house.

  And it wasn’t like I tried to get a job as a talking head whose role is to challenge the left. Remember, I was a fitness editor—for Prevention magazine! The magazine that made Reader’s Digest look hip. I taught old people how to do sit-ups on cruise ships. I was also editor of Men’s Health. Then Stuff, and finally Maxim. These are not stepping stones to conservative punditry. Nope. I was sequestered in magazine publishing, a bastion of stifling liberalism so mundane in belief that for everyone in the profession, politics doesn’t even come up. The assumptions are such a given, it’s almost impossible for them to see the point of debate.

  Being an open conservative in publishing is akin to being a gay communist in 1950s Nebraska.

  They would find out my dirty secret by accident. Sitting in the cafeteria, everyone laughing about another stupid Republican, they’d see I wasn’t joining in. Instead I’d be lost in thought, stabbing an overcooked baked potato. And they’d ask why I didn’t find Newt’s latest gaffe hilarious. And then it would unfold: First, they would assume I was joking when I disagreed with them. Then, when they realized I was serious, they were confused. The kind of confusion you see on the face of a puppy watching a clothes dryer. The stages were as predictable as the ones for grief. Then, for the rest of my career there, I became “that guy.” The coldhearted right-winger with a dungeon full of delicious orphans.

  The good news is that when my political views spread around that company, like-minded strangers would pop out of the woodwork. They would stop by my office to chat. The president of Rodale Press suddenly became a close friend—a telling fact that the most powerful person in the building was a righty. In that company, possessing over a thousand employees, there were maybe ten of us. Which is nine more than I expected. We would meet in the basement, at night. Using a secret password: “Morey Amsterdam.” (Don’t ask me why—and if you ask anyone else about this they’ll just deny everything. That was part of our pact.)

  Where I work now, there are plenty of outspoken righties. But there are also tons of lefties. There are also lots of gays and greenies. There, everything is tolerated, so much more than at all the other “open-minded” places I toiled in.

  My employer is so tolerant, in fact, that it saves lives. I end this chapter on a surreal note: Sitting at lunch with the staff of one of my shows in a tony Midtown steakhouse. At the table sat an immensely lovable, colorful, hard-charging, cantankerous lefty known for running the Dukakis campaign and working in the Carter administration, among other things. He’s a bright man, whose views can veer from sharp to delightfully incoherent within the same sentence. During the appetizers, he went blue. Then purple. He was choking to death on an oversized shrimp (not me). The first one up at the table? The boss. This most evil of evil right-wingers pulled the lefty out of his chair and administered the Heimlich like a seasoned paramedic. Progress was made, but something was still stuck in the poor guy’s throat, and a fellow cohost—bigger and with longer arms—jumped over the table and finished the Heimlich successfully, and the lefty was saved by a righty.

  Yep, a righty saved a lefty. But don’t read too much into it, or you might think conservatives aren’t so bad after all. It’s like finding out Darth Vader was your father.

  A PACK OF LIES

  SO I’M SMOKING A CIGARETTE on the corner near my apartment when I hear two girls behind me, heckling me. Like I’m playing third base for the Phillies, which I imagine is a sports team made of adorable horses. At any rate, they’re loud. The girls, that is.

  “Get lung cancer, man.”

  “Secondhand smoke, asshole.”

  “Hope you get cancer.”

  I did my best to ignore it. But they kept going, getting louder and louder and saying all sorts of crap. (I think they might have had Tourette’s.) Finally, in a monumental moment of stupidity, I turned around and asked them, logically, “Why are you doing this?”

  They said, “Cuz it’s secondhand smoke. You’re going to die.” I stupidly tried to explain how that really doesn’t work outside.

  Secondhand smoke may be the most exaggerated panic since global warming, attention deficit disorder, bird flu, and Yahtzee combined. But because smokers are the easiest target to project your instant outrage onto, no one really questions it anymore.

  I joked to the girls that they were getting more toxic stuff from the bus billowing exhaust nearby. But sensing they had a hapless participant in their afternoon volley of acceptable bullying, they started once again, saying they wanted me to die.

  Now, I left out the part that these girls were black. By the way, there were plenty of black people on Ninth Avenue also smoking. That’s the thing about smoking—everyone does it. It’s a unifier. The great equalizer. A good lung dart has brought more people together than Kofi Annan singing Kumbaya. Addiction is color blind. It’s like stupidity. The reason this is important is that as a middle-aged white-guy smoker, I will lose, on paper, and elsewhere, when engaging in a debate with two young black women. In the name of modern political correctness, I must tolerate the abuse of strangers, even if I’m innocent. These delightful young lasses, however, could come after me with a vengeance. And, again, I didn’t want to end up on NY1 News (I was in pajamas under my coat) because my
appropriate response would be construed as a racial attack.

  I kept walking and they followed me, harassing me even more, even louder. Finally, I snapped, turned around, told them to fuck themselves, and tossed my cig.

  The damn thing bounced. And nearly landed on their feet.

  They came for me. For a brief, ugly moment, I thought my life was heading for total and complete ruin. Surely, I would be attacked, a crowd would form around me, chanting “Racist, racist, pajama-wearing racist,” and ultimately I would be arrested. My face would be all over the news, with clever headlines like “Butt-Loving Bigot.” I’d have to publicly apologize, shed tears in a press conference, and enter private one-on-one counseling with a man named after an herb. I’d get an earring and make PSAs against bullying. I’d denounce patriarchy and gender oppression, then call for reparations and a new currency based on the likenesses of dead hip-hop artists. I would confess I was a victim of adolescent beatings, and also a bisexual hustler during college. I would claim I was molested by an overfamiliar emu at the zoo as a child (which is b.s.; he was just being polite, although he still sends me flowers on my birthday). I would reveal my addiction to snorting pixie sticks in public toilets with Pauly Shore. In prime time, Dr. Drew would hold me while I shook with tears.

  This horror fantasy was way too much to bear. I scurried off into a drugstore and hid behind an Us Weekly (where I was gratified to learn that Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, had adopted either a child or a member of the Kardashian family—I was understandably distracted at the time, and possibly drunk).

  My point is, I had three strikes against me: I am white, I am male, and I was smoking. The girls had three strikes for them: they were young, female, and black. I realized that no matter how this “debate” would unfold, I would probably be the bad guy. I was already deemed bad. In the world of tolerance, I had no protective force field against ready-made rage—but they did. It’s an uncomfortable truth, but so be it. I guess this was payback for four hundred years of oppression that I keep hearing about but had nothing to do with it.